NSN Completes Acquisition of Motorola Assets

After delays that involved an intellectual property dispute, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Motorola Solutions finally announced that Nokia Siemens Networks has completed its acquisition of Motorola Solutions' Networks assets for $975 million in cash.

As part of the deal, about 6,900 employees will transfer from Motorola to Nokia Siemens, as well as responsibility for supporting 50 operators across 52 countries. The support covers GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, WiMAX and LTE products and services.

"The people, customers and technology we've acquired greatly complement our existing business by taking us into new markets and broadening our market share," said Rajeev Suri, Nokia Siemens Networks CEO, in a press release. "Our combined knowledge and experience will provide our newly expanded customer base with the means to grow by providing greater value to their subscribers."

Motorola Solutions President and CEO Greg Brown said the deal will allow Motorola Solutions to "further sharpen our strategic focus on providing mission-critical solutions for our government and enterprise customers."

Earlier this month, Motorola and Huawei settled their differences so Motorola was allowed to transfer its commercial agreements with Huawei to NSN for a fee, allowing NSN to receive and use Huawei confidential information to service the networks that used Huawei's products and technologies.

Nokia Siemens says that based on revenue, the addition of Motorola Solutions' Networks assets makes Nokia Siemens Networks the third largest wireless infrastructure vendor in the United States and the leading non-Japanese wireless vendor in Japan.

Nokia Siemens Networks also is acquiring a number of research and development facilities, including sites in the United States, China, Russia, India and the U.K.

Technology Business Research (TBR) analyst Scott Dennehy said the deal significantly improves Motorola's financial position, providing an estimated $1 billion in net proceeds even after the company dropped the purchase price by more than $200 million. Motorola has been unclear as to what it plans to do with the money, saying only that the cash will assist in "optimizing its capital structure," but TBR believes at least a portion of the cash will be used to help Motorola follow through on its commitment to pay down a $600 million debt note due in November.